ATI Radeon HD 4830 review

The Radeon HD 4830 is ATI's effort to fill another niche in the market with an impressive GPU. Whereas the HD 4850 - and especially the HD 4870 - costs more than £100 and encroaches upon more expensive performance products, the HD 4830 has more modest ambitions, slotting between the impressive HD 4850 and the £58 HD 4670 in ATI's range.

Accordingly, the HD 4830's core specification is slightly more modest than the other HD 4800 cards. There are only 640 stream processors compared to 800 from the HD 4850 and HD 4870, for instance, and its core clock speed of 575MHz is 50MHz slower than the HD 4850.

In our 3D benchmarks performance was, as expected, middling. A score of 29fps in our 1,680 x 1,050, high-quality Crysis test saw the HD 4830 just clinging on to playable frame rates, and both Call of Duty 4 and Far Cry 2 were playable at high settings.

Performance was similar to the equivalent card in Nvidia's range. In Crysis, Call of Duty 4 and Far Cry 2, the HD 4830 was on a par with the GeForce 9800 GT, which is marginally cheaper. The ATI card was several frames per second quicker in our Call of Juarez test, which could indicate better handling of DirectX 10 titles.

The HD 4830 may not offer the same grunt as the HD 4850 or HD 4870, but it's significantly cheaper. However, if you're after some gaming ability, but don't want to shell out for a more expensive card - and the media-orientated HD 4670 isn't quite powerful enough - then the HD 4830 would be a good choice.

Author: Mike Jennings